


A Willow Grows Aslant the Brook

by hello_imasalesman



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7926472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_imasalesman/pseuds/hello_imasalesman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Courier has forgotten where he's come from. (Based on the k!meme prompt, the LW is the Courier with amnesia)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Willow Grows Aslant the Brook

Bert Gunnarson is a member of the Follower's of the Apocalypse, too, and a doctor. Courier can't tell if that makes him like him more, or less.

"You the one who killed Driver Nephi?"

Courier nods.

Gunnarson has a gentle soul and sure fingers. Courier can't stop looking at his eyes. They're human eyes, unclouded by radiation or time. He nods, resolutely, closing his uncannily clear eyes. "Nephi has passed on. I truly hope his soul finds peace."

"That's... That's true. I hope it does." Courier says softly, thinking of the way his sniper round had pierced the skull Nephi had worn on his head. Two layers of skull, penetrated and bursting his brain like a grapefruit. He didn't collect his head from his body. Same as he hadn't approached Cook-Cook's corpse, after he had shot Queenie, or how he hadn't tried to breach the baying dogs surrounding Violet's remains. He hadn't gotten a single one of their heads. He didn't feel much need to prove that he could shoot. "I think it did."

Courier helps when he can. He's just dropping off caps at the Aerotech Business Park for the refugees, and some letters from some of the other Followers. Gunnarson isn't the most favorite person at the Fort, considering he aids the NCR, but he's a good man through and through, so he still has friends. He's taken the Followers of the Apocalypse creed to heart himself, and wouldn't deign to help just because he was also helping the NCR. Courier is just dropping off caps, and some supplies, but he stays the night. He sleeps in a cot next to Gunnarson. His face is handsome, especially in profile, the deep dip of his nasal cavity and the jut of his cheekbones through rough skin. A part of him wants to crawl into the bed with him. He gets nightmares sometimes, things that don't make much sense, wakes up moaning and sweating in his bed. He sleeps better with another body.

But he knows, shamefully, that it's not just that. He wants something he can't put a finger on, that he doesn't really understand. As far as he knows, he woke up alone in Goodsprings. He had always been alone. A week ago over a bottle of wine, he had kissed Arcade one night. Nearly broke his nose on Arcade's bigger one, because he had just gone straight in. Arcade still kissed back. And then he cried into his open mouth, big fat tears that suddenly burst from him in a way entirely unbecoming for his age. Arcade awkwardly shuffled his feet around. Said it was fine.

But he didn't want to sleep in the Old Mormon Fort, not that night. He would have rather been crucified by the Legion than look at Arcade's face. So Courier walked to the Atomic Wrangler to buy himself a few drinks until he could ease his ego into renting a room. He settled into one of the plush chairs with a beer in hand in front of the stage. Late night starred Hadrian. Golden patchy skin and wearing a near matching tawny suit, with a head shaved bald that was just starting to sweat under the harsh stage lights, he looks almost handsome under the guise of alcohol.

He wasn't heckled. Courier was pretty unremarkable looking, or maybe it's because he's looking at him just so. Hadrian orders him a rum and nuka when his set is over. He doesn't cry, when Hadrian kisses him. His nose slots perfectly into the slope of Hadrian's cavity and he feels his bones ache and his fingers itch. He feels it a lot. Deja Vu, some sort of feeling of profound loss. The loss of his memory has been like grieving a loved one. Because, in a way, he knows he has probably lost loved ones, lost family, lost friends through his forgetting. He woke up and he knew, keenly, that things were not right.

He doesn't know why he was on the road, he doesn't know why someone would shoot him. Doc Mitchell gave him a set of plain prospector's clothes to wear, since he hadn't been left with anything more than a wifebeater and a pair of boxers. He was rummaging through drawers and found a vault suit. Doc Mitchell let him have that without a question. Said there was something strange in the way his face twisted. Maybe it made sense, since he had been dug up in that grave with an arm sticking out of the dirt. Bloodied. That's how he knew he had died for a moment, because Doc Mitchell knew the marks of a Pip-boy's pneumatic clamp and the area where it's vitals taking needle enters from experience. His arm had been so pale there. But he had died, for a moment, because it had let go of his body, given up the ghost. And then, somehow, he came back.

Not whole. But he came back.

The sadness and the ache makes him travel. He thinks, he should be dead, and sometimes when he's crouching behind desert brush peering through his scope, he thinks he ought to just lie down. He likes to do that, often, even when he's not out and about. He'll crouch down and he almost feels invisible.

Courier thinks he believes it so much he almost does turn invisible, because he's awfully good at sneaking. He thinks, too, he can find invisible things, and maybe that's because he died once. Like when he helped all of those nice ghouls, the nightkin never snuck up on him. He can see their telltale shimmering. They look at him as if they understand. Davinson talks of stealth boys, and Antler, and Courier feels like he might vomit in the ranger helmet he's wearing. Maybe that's what happened? He used to be invisible, and then he forgot, and then he got shot in the head?

That's why he goes to Doctor Henry, really. He takes Rex with him, too, because he's a good boy with a broken brain like him.

Courier isn't sure how he should feel in Jacobstown. He simultaneously loves and hates the cold. It makes his heart ache, a weird kind of paranoia that he may succumb to the cold that only really leaves him in the warmth of the lodge.

"Maybe you came from somewhere cold?" Veronica says as they heat up fireside. Courier shrugs and smiles. Rex curls up by his side, burying his cold nose against the open palm of his hand. He likes Veronica; she's funny and loud but not mean. She called his hair "east-coast Brotherhood chic", whatever that meant. When they go their separate ways on occasion, Courier looks for dresses for her and she looks for helmets for him. She even got him a hood that looks like hers to wear, though he still likes wearing something that covers his face under it.

"I didn't think there was anywhere cold left." Courier says with a smile, playing with the tangled fur close to Rex's ears. "Radiation, you know? Uh.. maybe Canada. Or Russia? They might be still cold, I mean."

She smirks. "See, even the fact you know where places are means you're not just any old wastelander."

Courier shakes his head. "No, I'm..." He laughs, a tinge nervous, "Just a courier, you know?"

He understands Keenan, even though he's very aggressive and generally hostile. He doesn't like being looked at much, either. He doesn't like meeting other people's gazes. He taps his fingers erratically against the arm of his chair as Doctor Henry looks over his scans. He feels comforted and he feels sick. He trusts him to tell him what's wrong, to guide him, to let him know how to be better.

"There is some warping, similar to what the nightkins or aggressive stealth boy users go through, but it's very minor." He says as he turns around, clipboard in hand. "Most likely not the source of your memory loss, I'm afraid."

So no answers, there. But Rex gets a new brain, at least. He travels back with Veronica, leaving her at the 188 Trading Post. That takes a day. It takes almost another to get to Freeside. Past midnight, and the Courier doesn't feel especially safe crossing through Freeside. Sure, the Kings like him, and almost every begger knows he's a part of the Followers, and he has Rex by his side. But when he's dragging himself back from a day out in the desert, hunting fiends, he doesn't always trust his own feet to keep himself upright.

It's a small comfort, too. Just to have someone at his side. Like usual, it's a row of three at the main gate, peacocking around.

"Hey, hey! Courier, give you a walk around, if you'd like?" The usual King who stands there has a salacious grin, immediately stepping in front of the Courier before he can properly look down the line. He whips out a comb and brushes his black pompadour back, awaiting an answer.. It's not as sexy of a move as he thinks; in all honestly, it makes Courier's skin crawl, as if he should be afraid of the man. "C'mon, let me have your arm, I'll take you back to the Fort for free."

He even sticks his arm out, ready for Courier to hook it in, but he flushes and waves him away. "No... No thanks. Not tonight. Uhm, tell the King I said hi?" He sidesteps the man, holding up an appeasing hand. "Maybe next time? O-okay." Beyond the King there are two other guards. One mercenary type, standing ready at the edge of the crumbling curb, and a ghoul leaning back against the building.

He picks the ghoul. He always picks the ghoul. "Isn't that strange, Boss."

"I don't know." Courier says, dumbly, looking at his feet as Raul fiddles with his sniper rifle.

"Maybe you were a ghoul in your past life." Raul says, in the same tone he says most things, that makes it hard for Courier to really understand what he means. "And that bullet put the skin right back on you."

"I don't think... That's how it works." He mutters, flipping through the magazines on the table in front of them. He flips through the Wasteland Survival Guide, but he knows everything in it. He goes for the magazine with the bright red color, proclaiming in bright yellow Chinese Army: Training Manual. He reads it for more than twenty minutes before Raul looks up, puzzled.

"You can read that?"

Courier inhales. "Yes?" He glances back at the symbols. "I guess?"

There's stuff like that, that hits him. Things just come back. Mandarin, but only in starts and stops, when he least expects it. He could naturally shoot like a professional. He can keep a robot in okay condition. He likes big books, filled with more words and pictures then he'll ever have time to read. Pre-war memorabilia. The smell of cigarettes, and the catch of radiation in the back of his throat, the vague smell of rot.

The first time he sees him, the Courier's head throbs.

It's hard not to notice. The ghoul is tall, taller than Arcade, even, and Arcade is pretty tall. He's at least a head taller, cutting through the Old Mormon Fort like oil through water. The other Followers of Apocalypse part around him, until he stands to Julie Farkas. Julie Farkas, and with her mohawk spiked just so, and she reaches his height at the highest tip of her hair.

They seem to speak genially enough. The Courier raises his hand to the left top of his skull, to the faded scars where his curls refuse to grow. He wears it shorn on one side, long on the other. The new one there, that he got only last month, doesn't hurt as much.

A hand taps his shoulder. When he turns around, Arcade is peering at him. "Syringe?"

Courier blinks, and then smiles. He has to fumble on the surgical table momentarily, tapping against half of the instruments before he closes his hand around the syringe and turns it over. "S-sorry."

Arcade flashes a brief smile back. It's not very comforting, but he tried. "That's alright." He inserts the needle gently into the mixture, pulling back on the stopper. With any luck, the broc flowers they had been growing were strong enough, and this would help with some of the locals that wandered in daily roughed up by NCR soldiers. "Something on your mind?"

Courier glances over his shoulder. Julie is placing something in the tall ghoul's hand. He turns, and glances over his shoulder once, and then turns for the door.

"No. Just... Someone walking through."

He doesn't ask Arcade, because he still feels awkward from that one time. He goes to Julie when night falls. She closes the book she is pouring over. "I'm not sure who he is. Why?"

He shrugs, idly tilting the snow globe in her office over and over. "I don't know?" He exhales. "That's the problem. I feel like..." His leg won't stop jiggling. "He's what I'm looking for."

She frowns. "Well, he did say he was heading out on a caravan, the one the radio has been playing advertisements for. Happy Trails Trading Company? Heading towards New Canaan." She closes her book, "You've been such a help. If you need anything, we can try and give you some supplies to go after him."

He doesn't need supplies. He doesn't see the ghoul in the group of caravaneers; he goes, anyway, because there's no reason not to. He is 24 years old, a number which he does not know how he knows, and he's ready to keep walking. When the White Legs come, he is ready to die, but his body operates without his permission, burying round after round into their heads, bursting them live overripe fruit. He almost shoots Follows-Chalk, too.

Zion is beautiful. Zion is everything he could hope for in a home. It feels, somehow, pure here. And even though he expects it to be green, the burnt umber of everything around them feels just as good, just as fresh. The sky is blue and the clouds are fat. The water here is untouched by radiation. In some spots the water is shallow enough to just walk through, over the smooth river stones, and in others it is deep enough to bathe. He scares a group of friendly geckos, who hiss and flare their fringe at him as he wades further in. Follows-Chalk laughs when he starts to run in, in all of his clothes, deeper into the water, checking his pip-boy at every step. It doesn't click.

"It doesn't click!" He says, practically shouts, and Follows-Chalk laughs. "It's not... It's clean. It's so clear."

He can see small fish below, that approach his boots and then scatter once he moves. They settle back against him when he goes still again. "No. The water is pure here. Isn't it, from where you're from?"

"Yes," Courier says, without much thought. "It's pure there, too."

If the ghoul had gone on the previous caravan, they probably had gotten jumped by White Legs, too. He doesn't have much hope in meeting this figure, this missing piece, but he tries to keep it. The Dead Horses understand that kind of hunting, the hunger that will never die, even with time. The Sorrows, true to their name, do too. The Sorrows are a quiet, peaceful people. They tell him about the Father in the Cave, and when Courier asks if he can meet him, they smile and explain he's in spirit, not in flesh. But Courier checks all sides of large trees, just in case.

Joshua Graham wants to teach them war. Daniel does not. Courier likes Daniel much better than Joshua. He doesn't want to teach them war; he wants to protect them. He wants to keep them safe. They don't deserve to be run out of their homes.

They say he can't take down a whole tribe by himself. But he's certainly done more, and worse. He can't remember what, but he knows he has. He has taken down super mutants... He has taken down... Air Force bases. Forts full of soldiers but also scientists. He has... Killed many people, has emptied out an entire tower's worth. Daniel doesn't control him and Joshua Graham does not frighten him. He has never died before. He thinks, maybe, he can't.

He moves silently, and with Joshua they take out the White Legs, one by one. They never see him-- people never do-- but mines don't need eyes to strike. The shrapnel in his leg lodges deep and bleeds profusely. Salt-Upon-Wounds takes a bullet to the head, cowering in the shallow water like a dumb animal from Joshua's .44. The blood taints the shallow pool, tendrils snaking out across the ripples of the water.

Follows-Chalk is the one who wakes him after. Says that Zion is theirs. That the land might stay clean, yet. He is dizzy and faint but Follows-Chalk helps him up to his feet. Courier slings an arm around his shoulders as they walk out of Joshua's cave, blinking in the bright sunlight. He places him on the river bank. Courier takes off his sack hood, and the ranger helmet. He takes off the Follower's coat and the Vault 21 suit underneath that.

He floats back in the river, lets it soak into his hair. It come up high and muffles the sound of people and nature around him, warps it soft in his ears. He taps his fingers against the surface of the water, patterns he knows but can't remember the meaning of. He could float down the water way like this.

"Adam."

He opens his eyes. When he exhales he sinks a little further into the water. Between the red cliffs surrounded them, blocking out the sun from shining down on him, he looks lovely. His red hair is wet from the stream, and his cloudy blue eyes are wet, too. "Hey, Charon."


End file.
